By my math, they have 11 weeks to perfect the technology, paint it in neon colors, and market it to children so it will be ready for Marty McFly's arrival on October 21st. Good luck, Mattel...I mean Lexus.

You know, I was all set to point out that it would affect power consumption (meaning to alter it), not effect power consumption (meaning to bring it about), when it occurred to me that the usage of effect can just squeak by, provided you divide overall power consumption into discrete sections, each with its own cause.

Though it's true that those willing to actually speak out about it represent a minority of Slashdot's userbase, that doesn't mean that the many who choose to remain silent don't ALSO hate beta. To assume that those who keep their mouth shut all love beta is a BIG mistake.

If the administration really wanted to know what people think of beta they would run a poll about it. You'll notice that they are not doing this. I find this rather telling. To me, it implies that they don't actually care what we think.

unitron writes: Trying to figure out time zones is starting to make my brain hurt, but apparently in a bit over 6 hours somewhere on the other side of globe from Greenwich the Week of Slashcott will begin, as Midnight arrives for anyone in that zone, and then it travels west, where I will encounter it in about 23 hours.

So if we can get this thread out of the Firehose, I was thinking that, as the 10th arrives for us in our respective locations, we could leave here what may be our final farewells to Slashdot.

Until Midnight, this is our meeting place, our City Hall, our town square.

(and yes, our playground)

After that I'm not sure where we can congregate to discuss how the Slashcott's going and whether it's time to move on.

I'm going to jump the gun and lay claim to "So long and thanks for all the Karma", and perhaps someone could do a Bob Hope and re-write the lyrics to "Thanks for the Memories".

In the meantime, a bit of housekeeping.

An AC beat me to the week-long boycott idea by a couple of hours, and suggested the date range of the 10th through the 17th.

As part of a group of people familiar with the concept of beginning a count with 0 instead of 1, I really should have spotted the mistake of putting 8 days into that particular week.

So, should Slashcott Week end as the 17th begins, or do we give Dice a bonus day?

Antipater writes: The furor over Slashdot Beta is loud enough that even outside media has begun to notice. The Washington Post's tech blog The Switchhas written a piece on the issue, and the anti-Beta protesters aren't going to be happy about it. The Post questioned Slashdot founder Rob Malda, who believes the protests are the work of only a vocal minority or readers: "It's easy to forget that the vocal population of a community driven site like Slashdot might be the most important group, but they are typically also the smallest class of users." The current caretakers of Slashdot need to balance the needs of all users with their limited engineering resources, Malda argues — noting wryly, "It ain't easy."

Covalent writes: I am a long-time slashdot reader (don't let the UID fool you), and I agree with most of you that the Beta is a disaster. Dice has promised a fix, but what if this garbage is the new reality? Is there a suitable alternative to slashdot that members would find equally (or more) fulfilling? Is someone going to fork slashdot and start it anew (Taco can you hear me?) Or is this just the end of an era?

wbr1 writes: It seems abundantly clear now that Dice and the SlashBeta designers do not care one whit about the community here. They do not care about rolling in crapware into sourceforge installers. In short, the only thing that talks to them is money and stupid ideas.

Granted, it takes cash to run sites like these, but they were fine before. The question is, do some of you here want to band together, get whatever is available of slashcode and rebuild this community somewhere else? We can try to make it as it once was, a haven of geeky knowledge and frosty piss, delivered free of charge in a clean community moderated format.

Taco Cowboy writes: Before I register my account with/. I frequented it for almost 3 weeks. If I were to register the first time I visited/. my account number would be in the triple digits.

That said, I want to ask Dice why they are so eager to kill off Slashdot.

Is there a secret buyer somewhere waiting to grab this domain, Dice ? Just tell us. There are those amongst us who can afford to pay for the domain. What we want is to have a Slashdot that we know, that we can use, that we can continue to share information with all others.

grommit writes: http://slashdot.org/ is a website that is testing out a new "Beta" web design specifically crafted to make the viewer's eyes bleed. Editor samzenpus is quoted as saying, "We were hoping for at least a 70% eye bleed rate (EBR) but when we found out that we're actually generating 95% EBR, we were ecstatic. We are proud to break new ground in unreadable web design!"

Max Hyre writes: LWN almost went under a number
of years ago because its volunteer editors couldn't afford
to keep it up.
The readers rose up and insisted that they be
allowed to pay for it.

Can we do the same for Classic?

I'm a nerd.
I read.
I'm the one in the museum ignoring the display and reading
the description.
I want text, easily accessible, clearly laid out, and plenty of it.
I'll pay to keep the UI I know and love.

The Beta has none of those characteristics.
The Beta site is repellent, unusable, and unneeded.
I won't use it,
and if ``Classic'' goes away,
I won't visit/.,
and it'll be a pity.

How much do you actually receive in revenue for each user?
I suspect I'll match it to keep the status quo.
Ask us what it's worth to us.
I'd certainly pay $1/month, and would think about $5/month.
I bet that I'm not alone.

Ying Hu writes: Slashdot Beta is not Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/journal/63...What was loved about Slashdot does not appear in the new design — those creating the latter, please fire yourself and go work for a commercial consumer site (which we never read, and never will). OUR site should work without JavaScript, and JavaScript that IS used should to do something actually desired by a reader or commenter, not waste our bandwidth and CPU, and electricity, sending CRAP onto our computers. Improvements/ plugins, http://userstyles.org/styles/9..., won't be enough.